THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

258
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
ment in the fine arts that Is really genuine and original; or given to the world
any *vork of permanent value in any sphere. 147
This veneration of women is a product of Christianity and of German
sentimentality: and It Is in turn a cause of that Romantic movement
-which exalts feeling, instinct ar.d will above the intellect. 143 The Asiatics
know better, and frankly recognize the inferiority of woman. "When
the laws gave women equal rights with men, they ought also to have
endowed them with masculine intellects. 351 i9 Asia again shows a finer
honesty than ours in its marriage institutions; it accepts as normal and
legal the custom of polygamy, which 3 though so widely practiced among
us, is covered with the fig-leaf cf a phrase. "\Vhere are there any real
monogamists?" 1 " 5 And how absurd it is to give property-rights to
women! "All women are, with rare exceptions, inclined to extravagance,'*
because they live only in the present, and their chief out-door sport is
shopping. "Women think that it is men's business to earn money, and
theirs to spend it" 131
this is their ;
conception of the division of labor. "I
am therefore of opinion that women should never be allowed altogether
to manage their own concerns, but should always stand under actual male
supervision, be it of father, of husband, of son, or of the state as is the
case In Hindostan; and that consequently they should never be given full
power to dispose of any property they have not themselves acquired." 152
It was probably the luxury and extravagance of the women of Louis
XlII's court that brought on the general corruption of government which
culminated in the French Revolution. 153
The less we have to do with women, then, the better. They are not
15*
even a "necessary evil"; life is safer and smoother without them. Let
men recognize the snare that lies in women's beauty, and the absurd
comedy of reproduction will end. The development of intelligence will
'weaken or frustrate the will to reproduce, and will thereby at last achieve
the extinction of the race. Nothing could form a finer denouement to the
insane tragedy of the restless will; why should the curtain that has just
fallen upon defeat and death always rise again upon a new life, a new
struggle, and a new defeat? How long shall we be lured into this muchado-about-nothing,
this endless pain that leads only to a painful end?
When shall we have the courage to fling defiance into the face of the
Will, to tell it that the loveliness of life is a lie, and that the greatest
boon of all is death?
"'Essay on Women, p. 79. ""Ill, 209-14.
"Essay on Women, p. 84. ^Ibid., p. 86.
Wallace, p. 80. An echo of Schopenhauer's dissatisfaction with his mother*!
extravagance.
a8 Essay on Women, p. 89.
"'Carlyle's phrase.